fiona wallace said:HM Customs & Excise is the VAT MAN Rose, as Room One says though, you don't have to worry about this until you have £60k turnover on your books. With regard to bookeeping/accounting, ther is a book called Vacount Account Book available from phone no.01723 892499 which will allow you to do your own bookeeping very easily as long as you do it monthly when your bank statements arrive, fill it in for a year and then hand it over to your accountant with all the receipts and they shouldn't charge you too much as you have already done most of the work (easily)...it will also allow you to do your VAT returns when you get over the threshold of 60k. HTH.
Ola again...
Correct I was referring to the VAT Man but this has just reminded me. Your staff member will have to pay tax and national insurance, especially if this will be a second job. She might not have to if she is a student as well ,or has children. For this you need a payroll system and need to issue her with weekly / monthly payslips. I used to do my own payroll manually but have now moved on to a computer software package that is just quicker, but while you have only one employee it would take you know time at all. However it is a lot of info to learn if you are not particularly interested in that side of business. Book keepers or accountants usually only charge a few pounds for each payslip they produce. The Inland Revenue run free business workshops to teach you how to operate payroll and provide free telephone and internet support so it didn't cost me a penny to learn how to do it myself. I can give you a rough iddea of what sort of tax she will be paying if you let me know her personal circumstances i.e age, status, children, second job/only job, student etc...